Hello everyone,
I've spent a little time thinking about Officer Skills and which are useful on what kind of ship. I've compiled a few builds into a document below, along with a guide for how to use it. I'm very interested to hear if you find this helpful, if you agree with the choices I've made and how so/why not.
Cheers!
Naw
Officer Skill Builds v2.0
What is this guide?Your officers start off at level 1 with 2 skills points and gain an extra skill point at each level-up, up to a maximum of 21 skill points at level 20. This is enough to fully max out 7 skills, but unfortunately you don't always get a say in what skills your officer gets. The two starting skills are randomly selected and, upon leveling up, you are presented with two randomly generated choices allowing you to level up an existing skill or pick a new skill. You may never get the chance to pick the skill you want and could be force into picking sub-optimal choices for the officer's intended role. Therefore I've made each build into a rating list rather than a straight-up pick order, as you won't always get what you want. I've rated the skills in four categories:
Essential,
Good,
Acceptable and
Bad.
Essential - These are the skills I consider best for this kind of build. They directly boost the core idea of the build and should be taken immediately.
Good - These are skills that are good for the build, but aren't essential to making it work.
Acceptable - These are skills that provide a tangible benefit and are acceptable to take. However, they are outclassed by the two better categories and you should never pick this skill over a better one.
Bad - These are skills that you should stay away from. Any benefits they provide apply in a situation where it's already too late (e.g. an Artillery ship taking hull damage).
How do I use this guide?The idea is that this chart can help you level up your officers to ensure you're getting the most out of spending the 21 skill points available to them over the course of their career. You can print it out and keep it on the desk with you or simply open it on your computer whenever you're leveling up. As mentioned above, you won't be able to allocate the skills exactly the way you want, but there is a strategy you can employ to get a close as possible to an ideal build. The strategy revolves around prioritizing picking up 4-5
Essential skills and 2-3 appropriate*
Good skills for your particular build first. This helps you avoid picking up
Acceptable and
Bad skill choices (which would eat away at the 21 points better spent elsewhere) by choosing to level up an existing good choice and gives your more opportunities to pick up better skills later down the road.
*
By appropriate, I mean appropriate to the ship your officer is captaining. If you're putting a Carrier-build officer on a Heron with a Missile weapon in the medium slot, then Missile Specialization is an appropriate pick, but Target Analysis might not be.Skill Picking AlgorithmWhenever you level up an officer, use the highest available option on this list.
- Pick a new Essential skill. These are the core skills of the build and you really want to have these.
- Pick a new appropriate Good skill. This improves the odds of getting a missing Essential skill later down the line and it's another skill you can level up instead of learning a new Acceptable or Bad skill.
- EXCEPTION: If this officer has already got seven appropriate skills between their Essential and Good skills and one of the next two steps is available to you, skip this step. It's almost always better to push an existing appropriate skill to max level than it is to pick up a new one.
- Level up an existing Essential skill.
- Level up an existing Good skill.
- Level up an existing Acceptable skill. Better to level up a sub-optimal choice than a poor one.
- Pick a new Acceptable skill. These are better than Bad skills and represent sub-optimal rather than useless skills.
- Level up an existing Bad skill. Better level up a poor skill than to get a new one that might clog up your choices.
- Pick up a new Bad skill.
Builds Explained ArtilleryAn Artillery ship is any ship equipped with Tactical Lasers, Graviton Beams, High-Intensity Lasers, Railguns, Hypervelocity Drivers and Heavy Maulers. It is intended to do one thing: pummel enemy ships at long range. In order of importance, the most relevant skills for an Officer captaining this ship (1) Increase gunnery range, (2) Boost damage output and armour-cracking ability and (3) Give it enough speed to stay at range. Leftover skills are best spent improving flux dissipation and helping the ship protect itself from long-range counter-barrage.
Low-Tech BattleshipA Battleship is the ship that is the highest weight class in the battle and can simply out-duel any enemy ship by virtue of dying last. While damage boosts are good, nothing quite keeps this kind of ship going (and pumping out damage) than staying alive. Therefore, in order of importance, the relevant skills for an Officer captaining this ship (1) Improve shields (2) Improve armour and damage reduction, and (3) Improve armour-cracking ability. Leftover points can be invested into doing additional damage, or improving the power grid.
High-Tech BattleshipCopared to a Low-Tech Battleship, a High-Tech Battleship typically features worse armour, but more efficient shields and better flux capacity/dissipation. This shifts some of the focus away from improving armour and towards range, and the power grid so that the ship can make the best out of its shields. Therefore, in order of importance, the relevant skills for an Officer captaining this ship (1) Improve shields (2) Improve armour-cracking ability, and (3) Improve the power grid and gunnery range. Leftover points can be invested into doing additional damage, or improving armour.
CarrierThis category speaks for itself. A Carrier is any ship that deals damage primarily through the use of fighters, rather than gunnery. In order of importance, take skills that (1) Improve its ability to replace fighters, (2) Boost fighter combat capability and (3) Keeping the Carrier out of the fight. Spare points can be invested to make the Carrier a support platform through missiles and long-range gunnery.
FrigateThis category is for ships that are the lowest weight class in the battle, Frigates and some Destroyers. They typically have the lowest base stats in the fight and this creates two problems. Firstly, the frigate needs to stay alive by staying mobile and out of reach, secondly, the Frigate needs to do enough damage to actually cut through shields and armour. This means that the most important skills (1) Keep the ship moving fast - all the time, (2) Provide a much-needed boost to defensive capability and (3) Improve armour-cracking ability. Extra points can be spent on improving dissipation (if the ship can't fire all its guns with shields active and stay at 0 flux), Gunnery Damage, Missile Damage or a Range boost.
